The Animal Welfare Implications of Cetacean Deaths in Fisheries

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Similarly in the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996:- ‘if … any person mutilates, kicks, beats, nails or otherwise impales, stabs, burns, stones, crushes, drowns, drags or asphyxiates any wild mammal with intent to inflict unnecessary suffering he shall be guilty of an offence.’ Elsewhere within Europe, the Lithuanian Law of Wildlife 1997 prohibits 'cruel behaviour towards wild animals’; this is supplemented by the Law on the Care, Keeping and Use of Animals 1997, which seeks to protect animals from ‘suffering, cruel treatment and other negative pressures’. Similarly, Poland's Animal Protection Act 1997 provides that ‘unjustified or inhumane killing of animals and their abuse is forbidden’. Globally, the majority of countries have laws that protect animals against pain and suffering (Gillespie 2003); for example, all US states and the District of Columbia have anti-cruelty laws, which generally prohibit the intentional torturing and killing of an animal (Gillespie 2003; Rowen & Rosen 2005). Across most animal welfare legislation, causing death or suffering to wild animals is prohibited, including, in some countries, by drowning. However, it is the intentional, not incidental, causing of suffering or death that is prohibited, and so the negative welfare consequences for cetaceans that are bycaught as the incidental result of fishing activities are not covered by current welfare legislation. However, guidelines to ensure an adequate level of animal welfare are welldefined for certain sectors; those that are relevant to cetacean bycatch are the standards for the slaughter of livestock and the trapping standards for killing and restraining traps. 6.4. Farm animal welfare and slaughter standards Standards for the humane killing of farm animals are becoming commonplace within international law. The emerging consensus is that where animals are slaughtered commercially for meat, they must not suffer at the time of death, must be rendered immediately insensible and thus, are required to be stunned or anaesthetised before killing (Gregory & Lowe 1999). In a study of slaughtering methods, all 27 countries surveyed required ‘instantaneous’ death and, in most cases, this required a stunning process which lasted until death (Gregory 1989/90; Gregory & Lowe 1999). Stunning is carried out in three ways: head concussion, electric current and carbon dioxide 29
(Mellor & Littin 2004). Death is usually through a throat or neck cut, which severs the main blood vessels supplying and draining the brain, leading to rapid unconsciousness (Mellor & Littin 2004). Without stunning, the time to unconsciousness varies across species (Table 4). However, even without stunning, these times are significantly shorter than the likely time to death in bycaught cetaceans (Table 3). Table 4. Time to unconsciousness (seconds) of different livestock following exsanguination without stunning Livestock Time to unconsciousness Study (seconds) Sheep: lamb adult 2-6.5 2-29 Blackmore & Newhook 1981 Blackmore & Newhook 1981; Gregory & Wotton 1984a Cattle: calf adult 17-168 20-102 Blackmore & Newhook 1981; Gregory & Wotton 1984b Daly et al. (1988) Pigs 13-105 Blackmore & Newhook 1981; Wotton & Gregory 1986 Poultry: turkeys chickens 30-64 373±19 Gregory & Wotton 1988 Savenije et al. 2000 6.5. International standards for killing and restraining traps Two kinds of traps are used to catch terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals: those that kill the animal (killing traps) and those that restrain it until contact is made by the trapper (restraining traps). It is recognised that trapping wild animals can cause poor welfare, and this has led to local, national and international legislation that restricts the types of traps used. For instance, 80 countries including the EU ban leg-hold traps (Fox 2004). Lobbying by animal welfare organisations led to the first attempt by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to define humane standards for killing and restraining traps (Harrop 2003). Despite considerable efforts, the commission appointed to draft the standards could not achieve consensus on the definition of humaneness or on the threshold time limits to unconsciousness for killing traps (Harrop 2003). Instead, the commission produced two documents to provide an agreed process for testing performance, efficiency and trauma levels of killing and restraining traps (ISO 10990-4 1999; ISO 10990-5 1999). Though the ISO standards do not offer any definition of acceptable welfare standards, they provide 30
Page 2 and 3: The Animal Welfare Implications of
Page 4 and 5: prohibits the infliction of deliber
Page 6 and 7: 1. Introduction Incidental capture
Page 8 and 9: whole shoals of fish. Demersal traw
Page 10 and 11: fishing activities; (ii) altering t
Page 12 and 13: apparently whilst foraging at or ne
Page 14 and 15: encounters can cause serious health
Page 16 and 17: the incidence of broken beaks for h
Page 18 and 19: Table 1. Gross pathological changes
Page 20 and 21: 65.4% visceral congestion, typicall
Page 22 and 23: (Jepson et al. 2000; Knieriem & Gar
Page 24 and 25: Short periods of capture and restra
Page 26 and 27: 5.7. Social implications of cetacea
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Page 32 and 33: some comparative measures which can
Page 34 and 35: Table 6. ISO trauma scale developed
Page 36 and 37: Akamatsu, T., Wang, D., Wang, K. &
Page 38 and 39: Close, B., Banister, K., Baumans, V
Page 40 and 41: Dawson, S.M. & Slooten, E. (1993) C
Page 42 and 43: Gillespie, A. (2002) Wasting the oc
Page 44 and 45: Lange, C.B. & Warner, R.R. (2001) H
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The Animal Welfare Implications of Cetacean Deaths in Fisheries

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